Thursday, December 22, 2005

Or is it the other way around? The first thing that came to mind as I started reading this was whether a
causal relationship had been established. Just because there are a lot of
churches in Nevada does not necessarily mean that churches cause gambling and prostitution.
Similarly, going to church may not raise income as this research finds, income and going to church may simply be correlated through a common response to a third variable, or causality could run in the other direction. However, causality is a focal point of the discussion:

Wealth from worship, The Economist: At Christmas, many people do things they
would never dream of the rest of the year... Some even go to church. Attendance
soars, as millions of once-a-year worshippers fill the pews. ... Some of the
occasional churchgoers must wonder whether they might benefit from turning up
more often. If they did so, they could gain more than spiritual nourishment.
Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
claims that regular religious participation leads to better education, higher
income and a lower chance of divorce. His results ... imply that doubling church
attendance raises someone's income by almost 10%.

The idea that religion can bring material advantages has a distinguished
history. A century ago Max Weber argued that the Protestant work ethic lay
behind Europe's prosperity. More recently Robert Barro, a professor at Harvard,
has been examining the links between religion and economic growth ... At the
microeconomic level, several studies have concluded that religious participation
is associated with lower rates of crime, drug use and so forth. ...

Until recently, however, there was little quantitative research on whether
religion affects income directly and if so, by how much. A big obstacle is the
difficulty of disentangling cause and effect. That frequent churchgoers have
higher incomes than non-churchgoers does not prove that religion made them
richer. It might be that richer people are likelier to go to church. Or
unrelated traits, such as greater ambition or personal discipline, could lead
people both to go to church and also to succeed in their work.

To distinguish cause from coincidence, Mr Gruber uses information on the
ethnic mix of neighbourhoods and congregations. ... Measuring the density of
nationalities that share a religion in a particular city can ... be a good
predictor of church attendance. But ... [s]tudies have found that people who
live with lots of others of the same ethnic origin tend to be worse off than
those who are not “ghettoised”. So Mr Gruber excludes an individual's own group
from the measures, and instead calculates the density of “co-religionists”, the
proportion of the population that shares your religion but not your race.
According to Mr Gruber's calculations, a[n]... increase in the density of
co-religionists leads to a... rise in churchgoing. Once he has controlled for
other inter-city differences, Mr Gruber finds that a[n]... increase in the
density of co-religionists leads to a ... rise in income...

Other economists, though they think Mr Gruber's approach is clever, are not
sure that he has established a causal link between religious attendance and
wealth. So how might churchgoing make you richer? Mr Gruber offers several
possibilities. One plausible idea is that going to church yields “social
capital”, a web of relationships that fosters trust. Economists think such ties
can be valuable... Churchgoing may simply be an efficient way of creating them.
Another possibility is that a church's members enjoy mutual emotional and
(maybe) financial insurance. That allows them to recover more quickly from
setbacks, such as the loss of a job... Or perhaps religion and wealth are linked
through education. Mr Gruber's results suggest that higher church attendance
leads to more years at school and less chance of dropping out of college. A
vibrant church might also boost the number of religious schools, which in turn
could raise academic achievement. Finally, religious faith itself might be the
channel through which churchgoers become richer. Perhaps, Mr Gruber muses, the
faithful may be “less stressed out” about life's daily travails and thus better
equipped for success...

We bid you welcome to what hopefully is going to be a good and educational tradition here at the BLC blog. Let us set up a framework of what we are going to present for you in the new year. The English magazine The Economist has a weekly column entitled & [Read More]

Tracked on Sunday, December 25, 2005 at 02:42 PM

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Do Fortuitous Economic Outcomes Cause People to Go to Church?

Or is it the other way around? The first thing that came to mind as I started reading this was whether a
causal relationship had been established. Just because there are a lot of
churches in Nevada does not necessarily mean that churches cause gambling and prostitution.
Similarly, going to church may not raise income as this research finds, income and going to church may simply be correlated through a common response to a third variable, or causality could run in the other direction. However, causality is a focal point of the discussion:

Wealth from worship, The Economist: At Christmas, many people do things they
would never dream of the rest of the year... Some even go to church. Attendance
soars, as millions of once-a-year worshippers fill the pews. ... Some of the
occasional churchgoers must wonder whether they might benefit from turning up
more often. If they did so, they could gain more than spiritual nourishment.
Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
claims that regular religious participation leads to better education, higher
income and a lower chance of divorce. His results ... imply that doubling church
attendance raises someone's income by almost 10%.

The idea that religion can bring material advantages has a distinguished
history. A century ago Max Weber argued that the Protestant work ethic lay
behind Europe's prosperity. More recently Robert Barro, a professor at Harvard,
has been examining the links between religion and economic growth ... At the
microeconomic level, several studies have concluded that religious participation
is associated with lower rates of crime, drug use and so forth. ...

Until recently, however, there was little quantitative research on whether
religion affects income directly and if so, by how much. A big obstacle is the
difficulty of disentangling cause and effect. That frequent churchgoers have
higher incomes than non-churchgoers does not prove that religion made them
richer. It might be that richer people are likelier to go to church. Or
unrelated traits, such as greater ambition or personal discipline, could lead
people both to go to church and also to succeed in their work.

To distinguish cause from coincidence, Mr Gruber uses information on the
ethnic mix of neighbourhoods and congregations. ... Measuring the density of
nationalities that share a religion in a particular city can ... be a good
predictor of church attendance. But ... [s]tudies have found that people who
live with lots of others of the same ethnic origin tend to be worse off than
those who are not “ghettoised”. So Mr Gruber excludes an individual's own group
from the measures, and instead calculates the density of “co-religionists”, the
proportion of the population that shares your religion but not your race.
According to Mr Gruber's calculations, a[n]... increase in the density of
co-religionists leads to a... rise in churchgoing. Once he has controlled for
other inter-city differences, Mr Gruber finds that a[n]... increase in the
density of co-religionists leads to a ... rise in income...

Other economists, though they think Mr Gruber's approach is clever, are not
sure that he has established a causal link between religious attendance and
wealth. So how might churchgoing make you richer? Mr Gruber offers several
possibilities. One plausible idea is that going to church yields “social
capital”, a web of relationships that fosters trust. Economists think such ties
can be valuable... Churchgoing may simply be an efficient way of creating them.
Another possibility is that a church's members enjoy mutual emotional and
(maybe) financial insurance. That allows them to recover more quickly from
setbacks, such as the loss of a job... Or perhaps religion and wealth are linked
through education. Mr Gruber's results suggest that higher church attendance
leads to more years at school and less chance of dropping out of college. A
vibrant church might also boost the number of religious schools, which in turn
could raise academic achievement. Finally, religious faith itself might be the
channel through which churchgoers become richer. Perhaps, Mr Gruber muses, the
faithful may be “less stressed out” about life's daily travails and thus better
equipped for success...